A very just fear of being infected with this cruel distemper; the difficulty of examining infected persons before the disease came to its state; the length of time of its lying concealed, by the care of the patients to keep it secret; the uncertainty of the symptoms, which distinguish it in the beginning; produced an extraordinary dread in all the inhabitants of this island. They inspected one another, since virtue and merit had no shelter from this cruel scourge. They called this distemper the leprosy; and consequently presented several memoirs to the generals and intendants, laying before them all these facts above-mentioned; their just apprehensions; the public good; the trouble, that this distrust caused in this colony; the complaints and hatred, that these accusations occasioned among them; the laws made formerly against such leprous persons, and their expulsion from civil society. They required a general visitation of all persons suspected of this distemper, that such, as were found infected, might be removed into particular hospitals, or into some separate places. These memorials were sent to court, which, giving due attention to these just representations, issued orders for the required visitations in the most convenient manner, for the good of the public and of the state. In the mean time, the post of physician-botanist become vacant in the island of Cayenne. The minister was pleased to name me for it; and altho’ this island was much more fertile in philosophical discoveries than all the others, he thought proper to change my destination, and sent me to this isle Guadaloupe; and did not forget the article of the leprosy in my instructions. When I arrived at Martinico in 1727, Monsieur Blondel de Juvencourt, then intendant of the French isles, communicated to me both the orders of the court, and all the memoirs, that related to this affair. A tax was then laid upon the Negroes of the inhabitants of the Grande Terre, to raise a necessary fund for this visitation, thus made at the expence of the colony; and Mons. le Mercier Beausoleil was chosen treasurer of this fund.